Individual "gays" can marry the same as individual straight folks. There are no more or fewer restrictions on them. A marriage is between a man and a woman -- always has been. Gay men are welcome to marry women and gay women are welcome to marry men. It's equal rights for all individuals.
dying with dignity,
Only if you want to.
smoking marijuana,
Agree. Should be legalized.
playing D&D in the community center,
The community center is a big government boondoggle. It's controlled by the government. Politics decides what the goverment does. Politics decides what the government allows in the community center. Don't like it? Then privatize the community center (or tear it down and build a Wal-Mart, or whatever). Play whatever game you want on someone's private property. And stop building the damn big government centers so we can stop listening to people whine when the politics doesn't go their way.
or a thousand other personal issues. Then it's regulation hell.
In general, no. In general, the conservative side wants fewer regulations. How many conservatives have to tell you they want fewer regulations and smaller government before you'll belive that at least some conservatives want smaller government and fewer regulations?
Don't water it down by claiming there are only "some" Bible-thumpers trying to tell us what to do. These Bible-pushers have become the most powerful force in the Republican party, and are only too happy to ask the government to regulate my personal activities.
Who are these people you're talking about? If they're so powerful and they're such a danger to your personal freedom, then you ought to be able to name a few things you used to be able to do 20 years ago that these people have succeeded in outlawing.
Why would someone want to "look it up" to get the wrong answer?
To be a conservative means that you resist change in society.
There's a debate in the US now about changes to the Social Security program. One side wants to leave it the way it is. The other side wants to change it. Apply your definition now, which side wants to change it?
Wrong. The conservatives want to change it. The liberals want to leave it the way it is.
Actually though, there is a word for somebody who wants a small government and who wants to maximize individual freedom. The word is: liberal.
Perhaps. But your definition describes the people on the conservative side.
Stop getting your political insight from the writer of your dictionary. He probably died 75 years ago and has little insight on modern politics.
And the only recent book burnings were to make a political point, not to censor. By the same token, the guys who burn the flag aren't trying to censor the flag, they're making a political statement. Neither burning books nor burning flags is a good idea -- both are, in fact, somewhat silly.
Also, buying a book and burning it doesn't violate anyone's free speech.
No books burned in the second one. The second one is a real example of something, but it seems like censorship isn't the goal of the government in that case. The idea it to sanction a country -- like the sanctions that were put on South Africa -- to get that country to change their policies. Exports of that country are sanctioned, which includes publications in this case. They're economic sanctions, they don't apply to ideas, they apply to money -- money from the sale of books in this case.
The US government has the option -- but not the responsibility -- to protect the free speech rights of people in other countries.
All that said, you're correct on the second one -- to a point. The government should be very careful to spell out rules that don't violate the publisher's free-speech rights.
---
Once again though, neither of these cases threatens free-speech in any significant way. They don't indicate that "the right" is out to censor, censor, censor everything. These aren't even indicative of a real problem.
The campaign-finance law is [a big part of] the problem. It needs to be repealed.
---
I guess Google is just too hard to use these days.
It just doesn't contain any recent examples of book burning for the purpose of censorship -- none that I could find anyway.
I guess I must have imagined all of those book burnings
My memories of history only go back so far -- I'm 33 years old. I don't remember any book burnings but I remember lots of talk about them.
When were the book burnings you didn't imagine? What year? What branch of government was buring the books?
removal of the teaching of evolution in schools in favour of creationism
Removing evolution in favor of creationism is anti-free speech but removing creationism in favor of evolution is NOT anti-free speech? I don't understand. It's just one choice versus another choice. It's not a free-speech issue at all.
The Janet Jackson situation is a tougher call. Over-the-air broadcasts are regulated. I personally would remove all restrictions on TV. Within a year, everything would be done, and all taboos would be long gone. Viewership would drop like a rock. Not long after that, the industry would self-regulate, and Janet Jackson and all the rest of the TV "performers" would find themselves replaced by people with talent.
The Right is the primary practioner of censorship in the world right now, based on "moral values" that don't hold up to even minimal scrutiny.
That's not even remotely true. Just because you don't like morals or moral behavior (Why don't you? Were you harmed by moral behavior in the past?) doesn't mean censorship based on morals is any worse than censorship based on not offending minorities.
Aside from regulated over-the-air TV and radio broadcasts, can you come up with a single example of government censorship by the right? What publication? Which right-leaning branch of government stopped or punished the publication?
Neither side is perfect. We can disagree on whether the bad guys on the left are worse or more numerous than the bad guys on the right.
The important thing is that free speech should be absolute. That goes for all speech, even commercial speech. That goes double for campaign speech. That even goes for shouting fire in a crowded theater. Campaign-finance laws should all be repealed. Sexual harassment "hostile-workplace" laws should all be repealed. College campuses should be warned that if someone's speech offends, then the offendee has the option not to take offense, but the speaker is free to say what he wants.
Let's not play the left-right game. Let's restore free speech.
Roads are paid for with the gas tax. They're essentially self-funding that way.
There are LOTS of things left to cut. School counselors cost money. Cut those. Enforcing no-smoking laws costs money. I'm not an expert on Wisconsin, but I bet they have a zillion different subsidies for farmers that could be trimmed a little. The list of things to cut is endless.
No, they come out with, "A study was published that says [product] may be harmful to you."
In the headline? The OP was complaining about headlines being wrong.
But there is a difference between a journalist and some fool off the street ranting in his blog.
I think the difference is a perception only. The media gets it wrong often enough so they basically shouldn't be trusted to ever get it right. Ditto bloggers. If you trust either of them as a group, your trust is misplaced. But you can sometimes trust an individual person or story in the media (or on a blog).
There's little evidence that any media is very accountable.
Health news is a good example. They come out with "stop using [product], [bad thing] will happen" about once a week. Two years later, we find out that [product] doesn't cause [bad thing] and [product] may be beneficial. No one ever gets fired. This is the normal state of the "accountable" news business.
Should we conclude that elephants are a crisis and are going to kill us all?
Should we sue for the damage that the elephants are suspected of causing? Or should we sue because corporations have so devastated the elephants' habitat that half of the studies didn't find any evidence of elephants at all?
Are the studies that found elephants funded by pro-elephant industry groups? If so, the conclusion has to be that there are no elephants at all and that the industry scientists are all liars.
Hopefully a news reporter will happen along soon and sort all of this out. I'm particularly interested in how these elephant results are hurting women, minorities, and the children.
If a terrorist uses a fake ID, or uses someone else's ID, they can sometimes be caught doing that.
Also, to get a fake ID or borrow a real ID, you have to involve at least 1 more person. It's easier to catch one of two people than it is to catch a single individual. It's harder to keep a secret if you have to tell someone.
So it's somewhat harder to succeed as a terrorist if you have to show an ID to get on an airplane. That's how you prevent terrorism, by doing a couple of dozen things, each of which make it harder to succeed at being a terrorist.
You have to show ID to get on a plane. This is to make it somewhat harder for terrorists to succeed in accomplishing their terrorist goals. It doesn't make it impossible, just somewhat harder.
Terrorism is a national security matter. Matters of national security correctly fall under the duties and jurisdictions of the Federal Government.
Having to show ID is not out-of-line. If terrorism didn't exist, then the situation would be different. Then there would be no need for a law or a rule that you must show ID. But terrorism does exist, unfortunately.
Aside from the mystery with the text of the law, I can't see where the government did anything wrong. And this kind of thing tends to discredit the otherwise good work of organizations like the EFF.
After just writing the code and seeing if it's fast enough, and then after profiling the code and finding this is the slow section, then the correct way to optimize something like this is usually to find some pre-optimized libraries for processing an image (or a matrix, or whatever your data is) and just call the library functions.
I never ceases to amaze me how so many people frown upon protecting the world we live in, the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat. "Liberal agenda" my ass. This is about our survival as a species.
Our species survived just fine before the environmental movement. Furthermore, our species isn't threatened by bad food, bad water, or bad air. Individuals might be, but not the species. Maybe environmentalists would be taken more seriously if you weren't so pretentious?
You would hope that the people expressing deep concern over matters of the environment would receive thanks and praise for the efforts.
How much "effort" did it take for you to be concerned? You want thanks for your feelings now?
Nevertheless, there is no shortage of greedy, wholeheartedly selfish people out there out to ensure their own personal and short-term gain, the consequences be damned. but then, I suppose I'm just some unamerican hippie...
Nice job. Create a boogeyman, and set yourself up as the victim. Not bad for one sentence.
When someone else wants something, they're greedy. When you want something, you should be thanked for your feelings. Are you sure you care about the environment? Are you sure you don't just care about... yourself?
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Except when it comes to gay marriage,
Individual "gays" can marry the same as individual straight folks. There are no more or fewer restrictions on them. A marriage is between a man and a woman -- always has been. Gay men are welcome to marry women and gay women are welcome to marry men. It's equal rights for all individuals.
dying with dignity,
Only if you want to.
smoking marijuana,
Agree. Should be legalized.
playing D&D in the community center,
The community center is a big government boondoggle. It's controlled by the government. Politics decides what the goverment does. Politics decides what the government allows in the community center. Don't like it? Then privatize the community center (or tear it down and build a Wal-Mart, or whatever). Play whatever game you want on someone's private property. And stop building the damn big government centers so we can stop listening to people whine when the politics doesn't go their way.
or a thousand other personal issues. Then it's regulation hell.
In general, no. In general, the conservative side wants fewer regulations. How many conservatives have to tell you they want fewer regulations and smaller government before you'll belive that at least some conservatives want smaller government and fewer regulations?
Don't water it down by claiming there are only "some" Bible-thumpers trying to tell us what to do. These Bible-pushers have become the most powerful force in the Republican party, and are only too happy to ask the government to regulate my personal activities.
Who are these people you're talking about? If they're so powerful and they're such a danger to your personal freedom, then you ought to be able to name a few things you used to be able to do 20 years ago that these people have succeeded in outlawing.
The other guy pointed out that you misread the law. All it says is that acknowledgement of God is OK and the courts can't say otherwise.
What do you have against God anyway? Did he make all the bristles fall out of your toothbrush or something?
Look it up.
Why would someone want to "look it up" to get the wrong answer?
To be a conservative means that you resist change in society.
There's a debate in the US now about changes to the Social Security program. One side wants to leave it the way it is. The other side wants to change it. Apply your definition now, which side wants to change it?
Wrong. The conservatives want to change it. The liberals want to leave it the way it is.
Actually though, there is a word for somebody who wants a small government and who wants to maximize individual freedom. The word is: liberal.
Perhaps. But your definition describes the people on the conservative side.
Stop getting your political insight from the writer of your dictionary. He probably died 75 years ago and has little insight on modern politics.
Those definitions are about 50 years out of date.
Social Security reform is a good example. One side wants to change it, and the other doesn't. Using your definitions, which side wants to change it?
Everything you've said is about school cirricula. The folks in charge of a school cirriculum can teach or not teach what they want.
I guess I don't see the free-speech connection.
I saw that first one. No government involvement.
And the only recent book burnings were to make a political point, not to censor. By the same token, the guys who burn the flag aren't trying to censor the flag, they're making a political statement. Neither burning books nor burning flags is a good idea -- both are, in fact, somewhat silly.
Also, buying a book and burning it doesn't violate anyone's free speech.
No books burned in the second one. The second one is a real example of something, but it seems like censorship isn't the goal of the government in that case. The idea it to sanction a country -- like the sanctions that were put on South Africa -- to get that country to change their policies. Exports of that country are sanctioned, which includes publications in this case. They're economic sanctions, they don't apply to ideas, they apply to money -- money from the sale of books in this case.
The US government has the option -- but not the responsibility -- to protect the free speech rights of people in other countries.
All that said, you're correct on the second one -- to a point. The government should be very careful to spell out rules that don't violate the publisher's free-speech rights.
---
Once again though, neither of these cases threatens free-speech in any significant way. They don't indicate that "the right" is out to censor, censor, censor everything. These aren't even indicative of a real problem.
The campaign-finance law is [a big part of] the problem. It needs to be repealed.
---
I guess Google is just too hard to use these days.
It just doesn't contain any recent examples of book burning for the purpose of censorship -- none that I could find anyway.
I guess I must have imagined all of those book burnings
My memories of history only go back so far -- I'm 33 years old. I don't remember any book burnings but I remember lots of talk about them.
When were the book burnings you didn't imagine? What year? What branch of government was buring the books?
removal of the teaching of evolution in schools in favour of creationism
Removing evolution in favor of creationism is anti-free speech but removing creationism in favor of evolution is NOT anti-free speech? I don't understand. It's just one choice versus another choice. It's not a free-speech issue at all.
The Janet Jackson situation is a tougher call. Over-the-air broadcasts are regulated. I personally would remove all restrictions on TV. Within a year, everything would be done, and all taboos would be long gone. Viewership would drop like a rock. Not long after that, the industry would self-regulate, and Janet Jackson and all the rest of the TV "performers" would find themselves replaced by people with talent.
The Right is the primary practioner of censorship in the world right now, based on "moral values" that don't hold up to even minimal scrutiny.
That's not even remotely true. Just because you don't like morals or moral behavior (Why don't you? Were you harmed by moral behavior in the past?) doesn't mean censorship based on morals is any worse than censorship based on not offending minorities.
Aside from regulated over-the-air TV and radio broadcasts, can you come up with a single example of government censorship by the right? What publication? Which right-leaning branch of government stopped or punished the publication?
Neither side is perfect. We can disagree on whether the bad guys on the left are worse or more numerous than the bad guys on the right.
The important thing is that free speech should be absolute. That goes for all speech, even commercial speech. That goes double for campaign speech. That even goes for shouting fire in a crowded theater. Campaign-finance laws should all be repealed. Sexual harassment "hostile-workplace" laws should all be repealed. College campuses should be warned that if someone's speech offends, then the offendee has the option not to take offense, but the speaker is free to say what he wants.
Let's not play the left-right game. Let's restore free speech.
My great grandfather had a mode of transportation that ran on grass.
The Supreme Court already ruled on McCain-Feingold. They said it was OK.
The Supreme Court is worse than useless these days.
roads cost money
Roads are paid for with the gas tax. They're essentially self-funding that way.
There are LOTS of things left to cut. School counselors cost money. Cut those. Enforcing no-smoking laws costs money. I'm not an expert on Wisconsin, but I bet they have a zillion different subsidies for farmers that could be trimmed a little. The list of things to cut is endless.
It's not fair that taxes are applied to a CD, but not applied to an iTunes download. Solution:
Repeal the tax on the CD and cut government spending.
A similar technique will solve all other cases of taxation that aren't fair.
No, they come out with, "A study was published that says [product] may be harmful to you."
In the headline? The OP was complaining about headlines being wrong.
But there is a difference between a journalist and some fool off the street ranting in his blog.
I think the difference is a perception only. The media gets it wrong often enough so they basically shouldn't be trusted to ever get it right. Ditto bloggers. If you trust either of them as a group, your trust is misplaced. But you can sometimes trust an individual person or story in the media (or on a blog).
There's little evidence that any media is very accountable.
Health news is a good example. They come out with "stop using [product], [bad thing] will happen" about once a week. Two years later, we find out that [product] doesn't cause [bad thing] and [product] may be beneficial. No one ever gets fired. This is the normal state of the "accountable" news business.
Your elephant studies are intriguing.
Should we conclude that elephants are a crisis and are going to kill us all?
Should we sue for the damage that the elephants are suspected of causing? Or should we sue because corporations have so devastated the elephants' habitat that half of the studies didn't find any evidence of elephants at all?
Are the studies that found elephants funded by pro-elephant industry groups? If so, the conclusion has to be that there are no elephants at all and that the industry scientists are all liars.
Hopefully a news reporter will happen along soon and sort all of this out. I'm particularly interested in how these elephant results are hurting women, minorities, and the children.
Did it say how greenhouse gases were causing the solar flares?
I think if we all start driving to work at night, instead of when the sun is out, that would help a lot.
If a terrorist uses a fake ID, or uses someone else's ID, they can sometimes be caught doing that.
Also, to get a fake ID or borrow a real ID, you have to involve at least 1 more person. It's easier to catch one of two people than it is to catch a single individual. It's harder to keep a secret if you have to tell someone.
So it's somewhat harder to succeed as a terrorist if you have to show an ID to get on an airplane. That's how you prevent terrorism, by doing a couple of dozen things, each of which make it harder to succeed at being a terrorist.
You have to show ID to get on a plane. This is to make it somewhat harder for terrorists to succeed in accomplishing their terrorist goals. It doesn't make it impossible, just somewhat harder.
Terrorism is a national security matter. Matters of national security correctly fall under the duties and jurisdictions of the Federal Government.
Having to show ID is not out-of-line. If terrorism didn't exist, then the situation would be different. Then there would be no need for a law or a rule that you must show ID. But terrorism does exist, unfortunately.
Aside from the mystery with the text of the law, I can't see where the government did anything wrong. And this kind of thing tends to discredit the otherwise good work of organizations like the EFF.
CNN is on cable, it's not an over-the-air broadcast.
Violating decency rules is intentional. Accidents at nuclear plants are accidents. Accidental deaths at nursing homes are also accidents.
Why shouldn't the punishment for a deliberate action be higher than for an accidental one?
After just writing the code and seeing if it's fast enough, and then after profiling the code and finding this is the slow section, then the correct way to optimize something like this is usually to find some pre-optimized libraries for processing an image (or a matrix, or whatever your data is) and just call the library functions.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a monkey arm controlled by robot thoughts.
Do we really want to turn our bodies into a battlefield for germ warfare?
In a war, the important thing is whether or not you win.
TV is so much crap, I'm done watching it. Actually I haven't been watching TV for the past two years
You deserve a medal. Check your local listings of the time and channel of the medal awards cermony.
I know that's why I play games:
1. Customer Service
2. Company's responsiveness to the players
It's not for fun and entertainment value at all.
I never ceases to amaze me how so many people frown upon protecting the world we live in, the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat. "Liberal agenda" my ass. This is about our survival as a species.
... yourself?
Our species survived just fine before the environmental movement. Furthermore, our species isn't threatened by bad food, bad water, or bad air. Individuals might be, but not the species. Maybe environmentalists would be taken more seriously if you weren't so pretentious?
You would hope that the people expressing deep concern over matters of the environment would receive thanks and praise for the efforts.
How much "effort" did it take for you to be concerned? You want thanks for your feelings now?
Nevertheless, there is no shortage of greedy, wholeheartedly selfish people out there out to ensure their own personal and short-term gain, the consequences be damned. but then, I suppose I'm just some unamerican hippie...
Nice job. Create a boogeyman, and set yourself up as the victim. Not bad for one sentence.
When someone else wants something, they're greedy. When you want something, you should be thanked for your feelings. Are you sure you care about the environment? Are you sure you don't just care about